Chapter 1 - The Sanctuary in Room 304
Rain hit the windows of St. Mercy Medical Center in silver sheets, turning the Chicago skyline into a blurred tapestry of gray and steel. The private trauma wing smelled of antiseptic, leather, and the faint smoke of expensive cologne clinging to the black jacket thrown across a chair. Isla Monroe stood just inside the doorway of Room 304 with a clipboard pressed to her chest, her blue scrubs wrinkled from a sixteen-hour shift, her sneakers scuffed, her eyes red from exhaustion.
Dominic Ashford sat on the edge of the bed, pale beneath his olive skin, his chest wrapped in thick white bandages. The monitor beside him beeped steadily, but his gaze was sharp—far too sharp for a man who had taken three bullets to the torso seventy-two hours prior.
“Sleep beside me tonight,” he said, his voice low and rough from the breathing tube they had removed that morning. “I’ll pay any price.”
The clipboard nearly slipped from Isla’s hands. “Mr. Ashford, you’re being discharged in the morning. I’m only here to collect your final paperwork.”
“I know.”
“Then I don’t understand what you’re asking.”
“I’m asking you to sit in that chair until sunrise,” Dominic said, gesturing toward the arm-chair in the corner. “Monitor my vitals. If my breathing changes, if my sutures tear, if anything goes wrong, you call the surgical team.”
“That’s private care.”
“That’s exactly what I’m offering to pay for.”
Isla looked toward the door. One of his guards shifted outside, a dark, heavy shape behind the frosted glass. “You have men everywhere. You could hire a full medical staff.”
“I don’t trust them,” Dominic stated coldly.
“You don’t know me.”
His dark eyes held hers. “I know enough.”
The silence that followed was suffocating. Isla Monroe was twenty-seven years old, a night-shift trauma nurse, and the legal guardian of her twelve-year-old brother, Marco. Their parents had died four years earlier in a highway pileup, leaving behind a mountain of debts Isla spent every waking moment trying to outrun.
Dominic Ashford—known to the press and the police as the Phantom King of the Chicago Syndicate—lay before her as an enigma. He was dangerous, yet in this room, he looked like a man haunted by ghosts no gun could kill.
“For one night,” he said softly. “Fifty thousand dollars. Cash. Tomorrow morning.”
Isla’s breath caught. Fifty thousand dollars. It meant saving her apartment, paying for Marco’s braces, and clearing the overdue bills threatening to drown her.
“Why can’t you sleep?” she asked, stepping closer.
For the first time, something raw moved across his disciplined features. “Because when I do,” he said, “I go back.”
She didn’t ask where. She simply pulled the chair to the side of his bed, sat down, and said, “One night. I monitor your vitals. Nothing else.”
“Nothing else,” Dominic agreed.
May you like
As the night wore on, the silence transformed. By two in the morning, Dominic’s restless breathing finally stabilized into a deep, quiet sleep—a feat his security team later whispered had not happened in over three years. Isla sat vigil, keeping her hand near his pulse, anchored by the strange quiet between them.
When dawn broke, Dominic opened his eyes, staring at her with an intensity that made her blood run hot. “Six weeks,” he declared, cutting through the morning silence.
